The fast paced novel “The Girl on the Train,” by Paula Hawkins will have you reading into the wee hours of the night to see what happens.
Our book club loves books that keep you guessing to the very end.
The story has three female characters, Rachael, Megan and Anna, that can’t be counted on for reliable narration. This adds a real tension to the story. The main character Rachel has a drinking problem and everything in her world is seen through a vapored fog like dream. She is so tenacious in her quest, first to help and then to find the truth, that it’s almost hard to believe she drinks as much as she does.
Megan and Anna are the other two narrators vying for our attention and confusing us just a little bit more with their version of things.
But, there are hints along the way if you stay very focused. A few of us figured out the villain before the climax of the story. We had a lot of fun discussing those hints at book club. “Do you remember…? Well, that led to….”
The story begins with Rachael sitting on a train and watching her old housing complex every week day morning and evening on her commute to London. Her ex-husband, Tom, and his new wife and baby still live in the same home that she shared with him.
A few doors down from Tom and his new wife Anna, are a man and woman that Rachel has named Jess and Justin. She doesn’t know them, they weren’t there when she lived in the complex. Rachel has contrived a story about their lives, and how loving and perfect they are.
The story kicks into high gear one day when Rachael on her commute sees Jess kissing another man in her backyard. Rachel wants to warn Justin that his wife is cheating on him. She becomes obsessed with this injustice, after all her ex-husband, Tom, had cheated on her and destroyed her life.
As she works up the nerve to tell Justin about what she saw on the train, she reads in the newspapers that Jess a/k/a Megan is missing.
Off we go to the races. We learn about Megan, Anna, and Rachel from beautifully crafted scenes. We start to care about Megan and Rachel, as dysfunctional as they are. As for Anna the jury is still out on her.
We also start to learn about Megan’s husband, Scott, and Anna’s husband, Tom. Scott is Rachel’s imaginary Justin. Tom had been married first to Rachel.
The interweaving of the backstories and plot scenes adds true dimension to the characters and we find ourselves even further adrift until slowly the small tiny morsels dropped for us start to get bigger and bigger.
We really had a lot of fun discussing this book. We didn’t learn anything that would change the world, but we had fun and sometimes fun is a wonderful thing.
Enjoy the ride!
Rating: 8